Fra Angelico

Italian artist

• Born: c. 1400
• Birthplace: Vicchio, Tuscany, Republic of Florence (now in Italy)
• Died: February 18, 1455
• Place of death: Rome (now in Italy)

Fra Angelico is best known for adapting the most advanced artistic techniques of his time (perspective and brilliant use of color and line) to extraordinary evocations of purely spiritual subjects.

Early Life

Not much is known about the early life of Fra Angelico (frah awn-JAY-lee-koh). His baptismal name was Guido di Pietro, but he was also named Giovanni da Fiesole. Il Beato Fra Giovanni Angelico is the name he was given after his death, even though he was never actually beatified. He was apparently an extremely devout man who, about 1425, took his vows in the Dominican order. The first painting of his that can be confidently dated is the Madonna Linaivoli Altarpiece (1433), which is in Saint Mark’s Convent in Florence, Italy. It is thought that he began painting perhaps ten years earlier, working on small pictures and miniatures, such as Saint Jerome Penitent, which is in the collection of Princeton University.

As researcher Giulio Carlo Argon puts it, Fra Angelico was a man of “saintly habits, a learned and zealous friar.” He seems to have turned to art not only as a way of glorifying God but also as a way of demonstrating the sacred contents of his world. This meant painting angels and holy figures in vivid color and specific detail; there is nothing abstract or stilted about Fra Angelico’s human and divine figures. They are a recognizable part of the viewer’s world, set off only by their brilliance and repose.

Fra Angelico may have achieved a significant place of authority among the Dominicans. One unverified account claims that the pope wished him to be archbishop of Florence. What is certain is that Fra Angelico enjoyed the respect of the Vatican and worked for many years on papal commissions. From 1449 to 1452, he was prior of the convent of San Marco. Still, his fame as a painter far exceeded his accomplishments in the Church. His paintings reveal such skill, clarity, and intensity that many critics have presumed that the artist’s aim was to combine Renaissance Humanism with an exalted portrayal of Christian doctrine.

Life’s Work

Fra Angelico’s main purpose was to give depth, resonance, and substance to his spiritual conception of existence. What separates his work from earlier medieval religious painting is his use of perspective, the portrayal of objects or people on a flat surface so as to give the illusion of three dimensions. In other words, Fra Angelico learned the technique of making his religious figures stand out, as though what he painted had an objective, concrete existence in the world of the senses. Perspective was a fifteenth century invention, and it is likely that Fra Angelico learned it from his contemporaries in Florence. At about 1420, the Florentine architects Filippo Brunelleschi and Leon Battista Alberti designed two panels depicting architectural views of Florence. For the first time, viewers of these panels could get a sense of the space in and around objects rather than having each object or image appear flattened out along the same plane. It was as if the viewer could look into a painting and not simply at it.

In The Annunciation , painted sometime in the 1430’, the Virgin Mary and the archangel Gabriel are framed by two arches that curve over them and create a coherent, concrete space that they can be seen to inhabit. This architectural detail is not merely decorative; it serves the function of creating a scene, a small drama that draws the viewer’s attention to the entrance of the angel into the human realm. Gabriel is depicted leaning forward, with the tail ends of his golden wings and of his heavily ornamented pink-and-gold gown bisected by one of the pillars of an arch. Mary, on the other hand, is completely separate in her own panel, save for a small piece of her royal blue gown edged with gold that extends slightly into Gabriel’s space. The Annunciation, Gabriel’s announcement that Mary will bear the Son of God, is rendered in three streams of gold lines that penetrate the pillar that separates Mary’s panel from Gabriel’. Visually, the two archways are linked by the representation of the Annunciation, yet their very solidity and the openness to the viewer suggests the simultaneous separation and unity of the human and divine worlds. Gabriel’s index finger on his right hand points at Mary while his left hand is slightly raised, his fingers pointing upward. Mary, with her head inclining slightly toward him and her hands crossed on her breast, assumes the pose appropriate to receiving the Word of God. As Argon observes, “every line in the Virgin’s figure is galvanized and taut, as she starts from her absorption in the prayer book on her knee.” The delicacy with which these figures are profiled within the archways makes them intriguing, integral parts of a spiritual allegory.

In 1436, the Dominicans of Fiesole took up residence in Saint Mark’s Convent in Florence. Their protector, Cosimo de’ Medici (1389-1464), the first of his noble family to rule Florence, made it possible for Fra Angelico to supervise the preparation of the frescoes of the building. One of the most ambitious projects was The Presentation in the Temple , a work renowned for its deeply receding perspective and its portrayal of interior lighting. As many critics have pointed out, the color schemes and lighting of Fra Angelico’s paintings and frescoes account for much of his success, for they reveal his intense concern with natural and artificial environments, and the contrast between nature and architecture. The presentation of the Christ child, for example, is depicted in a scene of semidarkness. In three panels the largest of which is set off by two archways with pillars the artist assembles three figures in the foreground that emit the most light and that are naturally set apart from the dim interior. Slightly behind Jesus, Joseph, and Mary are two votaries, a male and female, emerging from the archways and entering the center panel in prayerful and respectful poses. This arrangement of space was at the service of Fra Angelico’s effort to show how God had proportioned the world, with the sight lines of the painting converging on the Christ child.

Other works, such as Christ on the Cross Adored by Saint Dominic , The Crucifixion , Christ Scorned , and The Transfiguration , all of which were completed after 1437, suggest the artist’s growing concern with spiritual insight. They evince the effort of a devout man bent on creating objects of meditation. These paintings appeared in the Dominicans’ cells, and they represent (much more than Fra Angelico’s earlier work) an intimate concern with the relation of the individual soul to its Maker. There is, for example, Saint Dominic’s contracted brows and the tightness of his jaw and pursed lips as he devoutly gazes upward at Christ, whose blood streams down the Cross. Saint Dominic is kneeling at the base of the Cross, his hands gripping it as though to steady himself or to look directly at Jesus. This is the study of a man undergoing the agony of his own faith.

In painting after painting in the last ten years of his life, Fra Angelico concentrated on Christ as the very light of human life. In The Transfiguration, Jesus is depicted in his threefold aspect as martyr, creator, and savior. Enclosed in an oval light, with his arms outstretched and level with his shoulders, his hands, palms open, emerge from the light in benediction of the prophets and saints encircling him with expressions of supplication, yearning, thanksgiving, and contemplation. In The Transfiguration, the artist invokes the whole community of faith.

Significance

In 1445, Pope Eugenius IV called Fra Angelico to Rome to design the Cappella del Sacramento in the Vatican. Although he accepted other commissions in the late 1440’, his greatest work was accomplished in Rome during his final years with his rendering of episodes from the lives of Saints Stephen and Lawrence, some of which was undoubtedly completed by his pupils. In 1449, Nicholas V was finally successful in healing the breach in the Catholic Church known as the Great Schism, and that probably accounts, in part, for the themes of Fra Angelico’s frescoes, which emphasized the unity of the religious community and the renewal of the faithful.

Although Fra Angelico continued to paint after his years in Rome, his return to Florence in 1449 as the prior of San Marco evidently meant that he had much less time for his art. None of the works from his very last period of creativity amplifies in any significant respect the achievement of his mature years. He never painted a subject that was not religious. All of his work was suffused with the Humanism of the Renaissance. His religious figures are vibrantly alive with his age’s growing interest in the human personality. An innovator in art, Fra Angelico sought to adapt the latest advances in painting to a depiction of the greatest spiritual subjects. The faith he professed had to be palpable and demonstrable, in vivid color and in space that had a sculptural clarity of form and depth. His Christianity took the shape of an art that made a union of seeing and believing and put religion in a realm of the senses that every human being could experience.

Bibliography

Douglas, Langton. Fra Angelico. London: G. Bell & Sons, 1902. Still informative as a general treatment of the artist’s life and career. Douglas examines Fra Angelico’s work, his influence on subsequent painting, and his use of architectural forms. The critic maintains a careful discussion of the differences between Fra Angelico’s early and late work. Seventy-three plates, a bibliography, and an index of the artist’s work, as well as a general index, make this a study worth consulting.

Gilbert, Creighton. How Fra Angelico and Signorelli Saw the End of the World. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003. Gilbert examines the frescos at Capella della Madonna di San Brizio, which were begun by Fra Angelico. Index.

Hood, William. Fra Angelico: San Marco, Florence. New York: G. Braziller, 1995. An examination of the great fresco cycles of the Renaissance, including the work of Fra Angelico in the priory of San Marco. Illustrated.

Kanter, Laurence B., and Carl Brandon Strehike. Rediscovering Fra Angelico: A Fragmentary History. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 2001. An exhibition catalog of the works of Fra Angelico.

Pope-Hennessy, John. Fra Angelico. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1974. A systematic study of the artist’s life, early works, panel painting and frescoes, period in Rome, and late works. Includes a catalog of works attributed to Fra Angelico. The index and black-and-white and color plates are presented with impeccable scholarship drawing on sources from both the artist’s period and modern times.

Schottmüller, Frida. The Work of Fra Angelico Da Fiesole. New York: Brentanos, 1913. A biographical introduction situates the artist’s life and work in the context of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and Western art generally. Especially valuable for a discussion of Fra Angelico’s contemporaries. Contains 327 black-and-white plates.

Spike, John T. Fra Angelico. New York: Abbeville Press, 1996. A biography of the painter Fra Angelico. Includes discussion of the painter’s innovative techniques and his Renaissance altarpieces featuring Mary, the baby Jesus, and saints. Indexes.